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There is a correction in this article, which has been mentioned at the end.
The men and women in black were in action but not for the Abby Awards that Ogilvy & Mather (O&M) took home 15 times but the Kyoorius D&AD Ad Show, which was held here on Thursday.
WPP-owned O&M, whose employees are known for the black outfits they wear at award shows, walked away with a total of 11 Blue Elephants and three Black Elephants - the trademark D&AD trophies - at the inaugural edition of the awards.
With this, the agency was ahead of competitors such as Grey, Creativeland Asia, DDB, BBDO, BBH, Publicis and Scarecrow Communications, who took home between one and four Blue Elephants on Thursday. DDB was the second agency after O&M to take home a Black Elephant, which is like a Grand Prix, in the direct marketing category for client Aditya Birla Financial Services.
O&M won the Black Elephants in the digital category, including segments such as technological innovation, online branded films, and use of social media for the Bangalore traffic police, Google India and Operation Smile India, respectively. The agency drew a blank in categories such as press, film, outdoor, radio, direct marketing, film craft and advertising craft as far as Black Elephants went. However, given the stringent standard of judging, it was happy with what it got.
O&M won the Blue and Black Elephants out of a total of 45 nominations it bagged at the penultimate round of judging. This was the highest number bagged by any agency in the first edition, prompting Piyush Pandey, O&M's executive chairman and creative director, south Asia, to say: "Any award is as good as its jury and what I liked about the Kyoorius D&AD Awards was the complete transparency and rigour of the judging process. We intend to continue participating in Kyoorius. As far as the Abbies go, we liked it for what it was, not for what it is. If the pain points are addressed, there is no preventing us from participating in the Abbies."
The nominations feature in the D&AD Book, a much sought-after tome in the advertising world. Some of the other winners of the night, included Soho Square, the WPP agency for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the just-concluded Lok Sabha elections, and Mumbai-based Ideas@work, which bagged a Blue Elephant in film and press advertising, respectively. Hungama Digital Services, where ad agency JWT has majority stake and Webchutney, the digital agency acquired by Dentsu last year, walked away with a Blue Elephant in the digital category.
"In all, there were 988 entries in this year, of which 348 were in the digital category alone," Rajesh Kejriwal, founder of Kyoorius, had said earlier. It had put together a separate panel of jurors for the digital awards comprising digital specialists in its bid to ensure that judging was smooth in the segment.
Other categories, including press, film, outdoor, radio, direct marketing, film and advertising craft, together constituted 640 entries. A panel comprising Abhijit Avasthi, national creative director at O&M; Senthil Kumar, national creative director, JWT; Sajan Raj Kurup, founder and creative chairman of Creativeland Asia; Sonal Dabral, chairman and chief executive officer of DDB Mudra; Niel Dawson, a partner of London-based creative hotshop Dawson Pickering; Graham Kelly, regional executive creative director, Isobar; Woon Siew Hoh, regional executive creative director, Hakuhudo; and Carlos Anuncibay, executive creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sri Lanka, went through ads in these categories.
Nearly 220 organisations sumbitted their work, Kejriwal said, with the ad and digital entries whittling down to 190 and 100, respectively, in the first round. The nominations for the second round, were culled from the first shortlist.
Correction: An earlier version of this article mentioned BBDO was the second agency after O&M to take home a Black Elephant when in fact it was DDB.
